Eating Cheap Long Term Consequences

Conscientious parents make sure that kids eat healthy. It is paramount that sugar be kept to a minimum. Fruit instead of cookies. Milk instead of pop.

It wasn't always this way. I recently produced a cook book from recipes my mother used over the years. It brought back memories, to say the least.

When I was a kid, my mother valued saving money more than nutrition. Sometimes she went a little overboard. But in the inflation besotted years of the 1970s, particularly for a mom who grew up on a Nebraska farm in the Depression, saving money was the most important thing.

It's not that we were poor. We had a large sprawling house, three cars, a swimming pool, and room for a pony (that is a reference to Hyacinth Bucket – don’t worry if you don’t know her). But Mom never got over the fear that someday, she might end up back in her dust bowl childhood with no indoor plumbing or electricity.

Unlike me, Mom grew up poor. Walking to the outhouse in the middle of a winter night was a chilly endeavor. And there was no air conditioning in the summer. On truly hot nights, a wet sheet might have to suffice. You had to choose between opening the window for the slight chance of a stray breeze or closing it to keep mosquitoes out.

I'm not sure what she ate as a kid, but she did mention seeing live chickens in the yard some mornings, followed by fresh fried chicken for dinner.

When I came along in the 1960-70s, you no longer had to see your food alive. It was the age of convenience food, pre-packaged, pre-health craze. All that mattered to my mother was that it was cheap.

I didn't know until high school that Tang and orange juice weren't the same thing. My sister and I, however, were acutely aware that drinking Carnation powdered milk was not the same as having the real thing. I, for one, was traumatized by that clump of undesolved off-white goo in the bottom of my glass. To this day, I can barely stomach milk except on cereal - and it helps if it's whole milk or cream.

But I do have fond memories of other food items from the 1970s. There are some which today's parents wouldn't allow near their children, but that are comfort food for us.

What aging Boomer doesn't secretly prefer Wonder Bread? Come on, you know you do. Well, I don't, but I think a lot of other people do. Slap some Miracle Whip and baloney between a couple slices, and BAM, you're a child again.

There's lots of other stuff we loved back then that we don't see often in this Whole Foods world. Velveeta processed "cheese-like" product. SPAM broiled in brown sugar. Jello with carrot shavings (a salad) and Jello with Dream Whip (dessert). Some cooking trends from those days are a little hard to believe. But did those overly processed foods hurt us, after all? Well, I do struggle with weight. I would rather eat cake than pita bread. But I would also rather have orange juice than Tang. And in the end, I'm pretty good at saving money.